Fatal Shot

Recently, the business of Feng Zhi Dan Heng Ammunition Store had been taking a dive. Two tall, slender, attractive cowgirl sales assistant NPCs were lounging in boredom by the payment counter, their expressions blank.

“Welcome! Oh, boss. It’s you.”

Their faces lit up when they saw what appeared to be a customer walk into their shop. However, after realizing that it was their boss Feng Luo, their faces turned despondent again.

“Woah, what’s with the long faces? Am I not welcome?” teased Feng Luo.

Both of the NPCs had pretty good AI, so as long as you asked them questions that were within their scope of understanding, they would react just like any other human.

“No, boss… It’s just that our business has been really bad these few days,” said the slightly taller sales assistant.

“Yeah! Boss, it’s all because of the trouble that the Roaring Dragon Mercenary Group has made,” Jing Xiang complained disgruntledly as she clenched her fist and shook it twice in indignance.

“I see… Regarding this issue, I will take care of it!” promised Feng Luo.

However, right after saying that, he frowned. To be honest, it sounded like he was just comforting them. Everyone knew that the chances of winning were close to nil when it came to a battle between a singular person versus a force of tens of thousands. Despite that, it still could be possible if an opportunity like what had occurred on Silver Leaf Island were to happen again. However, chances like that were few and far between.

Nevertheless, seeing that Roaring Dragon Lightwind had already pulled off a couple of these nasty tricks, it was impossible that Feng Luo was not slightly p*ssed off by it.

Feng Luo decided to try to change the topic after seeing that both of his sales assistants were unmotivated. “I shall settle the conflict between us and the Roaring Dragon Mercenary Group once and for all after I’m done with this mission. By the way, where’s Old John? Is he out again?”

There was no sign of the aged Caucasian Gun Mechanic who had once followed him, looking filthy and homeless, into the shop and had refused to leave ever since. Having said that, Feng Luo was accustomed to his quirks and occasional disappearances. Even as the boss, Feng Luo had only seen John for about one-tenth of all the time that he had spent in the shop.

“Yup, he’s drinking at the bar again!” said Jing Xiang.

“Also, Master John wanted to collect 50,000 credits from us for completing some kind of task for you,” Lan chipped in. “I rejected him and only gave him 1,000.”

“50,000?” Feng Luo was taken aback.

50,000 credits?

50,000 credits was no small amount. It was enough to purchase some mediocre-quality but rare equipment.

“What the hell did he complete for me?”

Feng Luo trusted Old John’s character. He was fairly reliable as long as he was not in an inebriated state.

“Master John said that he left the item in the workshop,” Lan answered. “By the way, a parcel arrived just now, and I’ve sent it to the workshop too.”

“Parcel? Cool, all right!”

That reminded Feng Luo of something.

Has it already arrived?

******

Feng Luo entered the workshop, which was a lot more spacious compared to the shop in front. All the metallic, sci-fi looking machines were neatly arranged according to a specific sequence. The machinery in this room, used to produce firearms and ammunition, were worth more than 5,000,000 credits. These were the greatest assets that Feng Luo currently possessed.

In War, life professions required certain machinery and tools. If you didn’t have enough money to purchase your own working space, the alternative would be to visit the Life Profession Center and spend some credits to rent a workshop.

Fortunately, the rental wasn’t too expensive. In fact, most of the main structure of any piece of equipment component in War was made from intelligent machinery, 3D-printed at the molecular level. Hence, the process of making a gun with a complex structure was much easier and faster compared to back in old times.

As Feng Luo approached an operating machine, he realized that the indicator on the machine showed that it was completed. The virtual 3D hologram projected out of it displayed a gun magazine: Eye of the Thunder Gun Magazine.

Feng Luo remembered he had left a semi-finished gun magazine stored in a container of preservative solution this morning when he had left the workshop. It was now gone.

“Old John completed this?” Feng Luo was doubtful.

Looking at the data displayed, Feng Luo saw that the gun magazine was free of all residual energy and had completed the final procedure. Feng Luo entered his fingerprint and passcode to unlock the machine. The lid of the square machine started to levitate upward.

A palm-sized silverish-gray gun magazine entered Feng Luo’s field of vision. The surface of the new product was spotless, occasionally reflecting what appeared to be beams of lightning. The unique texture of the metal would definitely attract everyone’s attention. This gun magazine was a flawless piece of art!

Eye of the Thunder Gun Magazine

Bullet reload speed +40%, 1.5% chance of firing electrified bullets.

Creator(s): Feng Zhi Luoye, John

Overall Rating: Perfect

“No way… Is Old John actually a Master Gun Mechanic?”

Feng Luo was shocked to see the word “Perfect” sitting innocuously at the bottom of the data page.

A Perfect-grade Rare piece of equipment was something truly extraordinary!

Previously, it had been understood that the system would not automatically generate equipment based on the manufacturing blueprint a player received. All equipment in War had to be built step by step by the player according to the procedure on the blueprints either by hand or with the help of machinery. To make things harder, this process did not have a guaranteed 100% success rate. In fact, most life profession players would fail on their first few attempts at crafting when they obtained a new manufacturing blueprint. This was because the procedure may have seemed simple, but the handling of the materials could be tricky.

For a piece of Rare equipment, the materials required ranged from at least ten to several dozen. Furthermore, certain materials must go through a complex refining procedure before they can be used. A minor discrepancy in the parameter of the procedure would result in a failed product and, hence, a waste of the manufacturing blueprints.

Take, for example, the time when Feng Luo manufactured the Eye of the Thunder Gun Barrel. He had failed the first three times due to some seemingly minor and harmless mistakes. He had succeeded on the fourth attempt but had failed again on the fifth time due to another minor error.

He had wasted ten opportunities to make the gun barrel and had only succeeded in making four of them. Nevertheless, their overall rating was just “Standard,” which was the lowest possible overall ranking.

As for the gun magazine, he had failed in all of the three attempts he had made.

In War, every successfully crafted item would be appraised and then categorized by the system as Standard, Excellent, or Perfect. It wasn’t a meaningless rating; in fact, a Perfect-grade piece of equipment would typically have much better attributes than Standard ones.

For example, a Standard Eye of the Thunder Gun Magazine would give plus 30 percent on bullet reload speed and a 1 percent chance of firing electrified bullets. A Perfect one would gain the benefits of bullet reload speed plus 40 percent and a 1.5 percent chance of firing electrified bullets. The difference between the two went without saying!

Furthermore, if a player succeeded in producing a piece of equipment with a Perfect rating, he or she could keep the manufacturing blueprint and use it indefinitely. This meant that they would be making some big bucks from selling the finished products.

Feng Luo himself had permanent rights to use the manufacturing blueprints of three items: the M110, the deflagration armor-piercing bullets, and the double armor-piercing round. The excellent-grade firearm and the two types of Grade-C special ammunition had contributed at least 3,000,000 credits to Feng Luo.

However, Feng Luo realized that he wasn’t granted the permanent rights to use the manufacturing blueprint of Eye of the Thunder Gun Magazine after checking the system log. He reckoned it was because he wasn’t the sole contributor to this gun magazine. But he had also found a digital diagram in the supercomputer on his workbench. It had clearly outlined the reason of his failures on his past three attempts at crafting the Eye of the Thunder Gun Magazine and contained some additional remarks regarding the precautions to be taken while crafting the other components of the Eye of the Thunder series.

In fact, this diagram was worth millions!